


But One Thing Remains the Same

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Gen, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 15:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3697670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of AU prompts examining one Clara Oswald and her grouchy new neighbor/teacher/barista/cat-sitter/whatever role he needs to fulfill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spike

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone. I've given in to the temptation that is AU by telling myself it could be canon. After all, the Clara's in these stories could be echoes and therefore completely within the realm of possibility. They're going to be from Clara's point of view anyway, so no peeks into the Doctor's head...anyway, here we go. First up: "You saw someone slip something in my drink and now you're beating the shit out of them" AU.

She was going to kill Joyce for taking her into this. Clara sat nursing a drink at the bar while the underdressed and overstyled man beside her talked on and on about his many accomplishments, waving his hands and startling her every time he touched her arm to punctuate something he found particularly funny. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand Joyce’s intent—it had been a year since she’d lost her fiancée, a year since she’d had a real connection with someone. Her friends were worried about her. But as she sat and pretended to be interested in the goings-on behind the bar so that this dim-witted cousin of Joyce’s could maybe take a hint, she had to think that there was a better way. Behind him, the bartender caught her eye, rolled his eyes as if to say _check this guy out, amirite?_ And made the universal “blah blah blah” symbol with the hand that wasn’t busy wiping down the bar. Clara stifled a smile and let her gaze flit briefly to her date’s—Brandon, if she remembered right. She took another sip of her drink and nodded encouragingly, wondering how long it was socially obligating to drag this out before she could go home and crash. The thought made her want to yawn, and she stifled that too. Nine thirty PM, said the neon clock. She sighed.

When Brandon got decked, it was nothing short of a relief.

The man had come from nowhere—well, somewhere around her third drink— tall and wiry, commanding and a bit familiar, Clara noted. There’d almost no warning—a rumbling “You bastard,” in an accent that sounded just a bit more…wet than normal, and then a right hook to the jaw. The crowd around them grew quiet, and then erupted into a mixture of drunken cheering and swearing. Clara blinked stupidly as Brandon sprawled in an ungainly heap on the ground, moaning and rubbing his jaw. The gray-haired man placed a foot on his ribs and shoved, knocking him into a nearby barstool. “You stay down,” he said, pointing with one long and elegant finger. He turned to Clara, who was still processing what had just happened, and leaned in close to her face. His eyes, she noticed, were a bright, electric blue, and she’d definitely seen them before. They also seemed to be blurring, like she couldn’t look close enough to bring them into focus. “I’m sorry you had to see that, lass.” His voice was mesmerizing and disturbingly distant.

“S’okay,” she slurred, and then frowned. She sounded drunk. She wasn’t drunk. She knew she wasn’t. The evening would have been going a lot more pleasantly if she had been, and it hadn’t so she wasn’t. So why was everything looking like it was being funneled through the wrong end of a telescope suddenly?

“Hey,” the man said. He tapped her cheek gently to get her attention. The tentative touch didn’t bother her nearly as much as Brandon’s casual intrusion of her space had. “I know I’m a stranger, but it looks like you’re here alone and I need to get you out of here— before your boyfriend gets any more fine ideas.”

“’M fine,” Clara said, and stood to leave. “Jus’ got…a headache.” A distant part of her was growing concerned. She’d missed something along the way. She needed to get home. She lifted a foot to take a step, and then the world tilted sideways as she neatly lost consciousness.

 **************************************************************************

Clara awoke with the immediate understanding that something was not right. She sat straight up, dislodging the duvet that had been pulled up and tucked under her chin. She was in her room and—she looked down—still in last night’s clothes. She wiggled her toes. No shoes though. She glanced down—her heels were laid neatly beside her bed. A noise from the kitchen area of her flat made her freeze, and she looked towards the door. Something bright pink caught her eye—one of her post-it notes was stuck to her alarm clock. She tugged it off and squinted at it by the dim light of the glowing numbers—3:07. The writing was sharp and looked like calligraphy. “Please don’t be alarmed. I’m only staying here until I know you’re alert and safe. Signed, The Doctor.” She frowned. A doctor? Here? Why? What had happened last night? Clara slid off of her bed and smoothed the wrinkles in her blouse and skirt before nudging her door all the way open and stepping out into the living room. When she saw the gray head and the collar of the man poking above the sofa, hazy memories resurfaced and she gasped. Startled, the man turned around. He quickly assessed Clara’s face and stood to move to her.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I left a note…” Clara waved him off and he hovered uncertainly.

“He drugged me,” she said dumbly.

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “And there were three witnesses that got him a stay in the local jail. I was staying here to make sure you didn’t accidentally ingest too much of the GHB. I used your key to open the door…I hope that’s alright. I can leave now if you like.” Clara blinked up at him, noted how the lines in his face and the slant of his eyebrows all seemed to draw attention straight to those eyes.

“You’re my neighbor,” she said suddenly.

“I, ah…yes,” the Doctor said. “I moved in last week.”

Clara nodded. “Well,” she said. The fridge clicked, an encouragement. “It’s three AM and I’m not going back to sleep anytime soon, so if you want to start some tea, we can watch some crap telly if you like. There’s ice cream in the freezer. Double chocolate,” she added.

The Doctor considered, stared at her for a long moment, and she got the inexplicable feeling that at another point in his life, the man would have breezed out with a grumpy “no thanks,” but lines that were hard and softened and areas that had been soft were sharper and he simply said “I’m guessing two sugars?” and smiled when she blinked at him, surprised.


	2. Laundry Room Hideaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on the prompt: "escaped to the laundry room to avoid hearing my room-mates having extremely loud sex only to find you’re here doing the same thing" AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate titles. A lot.

The noises drove Clara out of her room at around one in the morning. Not for the first time, she did her best to remind herself that this was a good thing, that she’d had a place to go while the workers got the debris cleaned up and the walls fixed. A bloody firetruck through her living room-- _a fire truck!--_ , and now she was stuck at the complex down the road listening to the assistant headmaster apparently taking hands-on lessons from the school’s anatomy teacher. Clara gathered the essays she was grading and stuffed them into a bag along with her favorite book and her ipod. She picked her fuzziest, warmest blanket and threw it over her shoulders before stepping into a pair of slippers and easing out the door. The laundry room. She’d be safe there.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, she supposed, that someone else had thought of this before she did, but when she flipped the light on, she was nothing close to prepared for a mass of what looked at first to be a large pile of laundry to groan at her whilst covering its eyes. Eyes. It had those, though they were hidden under long and expressionate fingers now, which were definitely male.

“Sorry,” she said, and then “wait. Do you live here?” She held on to the strap of her bag warily, suddenly conscious of her pyjama set and blanket which were _definitely_ canceling out her “intimidate” expression. The pile of laundry sat up with a groan and took the shape of a thin, older man wrapped in a patchwork quilt. He removed his hand from his eyes and squinted at her.

“If I did, I wouldn’t be sleepin’ down here, would I?”

His voice was undeniably thick with a Scottish accent, more pronounced in his sleep-slurred state. Clara ignored that and bristled. “You can’t sleep down here if you don’t live here,” she said, with far more confidence than she felt. “I’ll call the police.” The man stilled and looked very solemnly into her eyes, and then his face broke into a toothy grin.

“An’ you’re down here to do laundry?” he asked. Under the fluorescent lights, his eyes were a mixture of blue and green that was so imprecise that Clara only realized she’d been staring when the silence stretched and she remembered there’d been a question.

“No,” she said. She could almost hear the last vestige of her dignity tucking its tail and backing away. “Look. I’m staying with a friend until my flat gets fixed and she and her boyfriend, well…”

“Plowing cheeks?” The man asked, his face a mask of innocence. Clara blinked. “Skinning a dingo upside down? Smashing pissers? Cave Diving? The no pants—”

“YES,” Clara interrupted. Her face was incredibly hot and she was distantly offended at the betrayal. She never blushed. But something about this man with his hair mussed flat on one side and his bare feet planted solidly on the cold tile was making her very, very self-conscious and she was beginning to think it rude. He nodded sagely.

“The fellow I’m bunking with is smacking the salmon himself. I couldn’t sleep with all the noise, so…” he trailed off and shrugged.

Clara took a deep breath. “Well,” she began, “I need this light for about an hour to finish marking my students’ papers and then I’ll be out of your hair. Not that it’s within the realm of saving,” she added with a cocked eyebrow. She was wickedly pleased when he ran a hand through the gray curls in a manner that was almost self-conscious. She turned to the small table in the corner and plunked her stack of essays down in front of her. She could feel the man watching her with interest, but refused to engage him in conversation, pretending to be very focused on reminding Johnny Swiftham for the five millionth time how to properly use the contraction _you’re_ —followed by another note that was the politically correct version of _“stop writing your damn essays in the second person.”_

“Clara.” She froze, wondering why her heart had just tripped over feet it didn’t have in response to the careful, almost reverent way the man on the bench said her name.

She turned, slowly. Her voice came out tinny and quiet. “How did you…?”

The man unwrapped an arm from around his knees and pointed to an essay that had fallen to the floor between them without her noticing. “Your friend Melissa is quite good with MLA headings,” he said as Clara swiped the paper off of the floor and laid it back on the desk. “Does everyone put first names in their headings nowadays?” He was messing with her and the knowledge made her smirk when she heard the eraser she tossed behind her hit its mark. She heard fabric rustle and bare feet sticking slightly to the floor with each step, and then a pressure on her invisible bubble of personal space as he reached over and laid the eraser on the table beside her hand. He lingered for a moment, and Clara didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until he’d retreated back to his bench. “I’m the Doctor, by the way,” he said. At this, she turned.

“Doctor who?” she asked, and then she recognized the book dangling from his long fingers. “Oi!” she protested. “When did you even get that?”

“Just the Doctor,” he said, glancing over the pages at her. “And when you were trying to figure out whether to bolt or lean in.”

“You’re an arse.”

“Heard that before.” There was something beneath the banter that Clara was startled to find. There was no reason she should be even talking to this stick-man stranger, and yet she was here, bantering, in a cold laundry room and the thought of leaving hadn’t even crossed her mind. “You’d better be careful with that,” she remarked. “It’s first edition.” She turned back to her papers and resumed marking, ignoring the “no it’s not” that was so faint she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. This time, backed by the hum of electricity and the occasional sound of pages turning, she really did focus on her work. Well, until she woke up to find herself slumped over the desk and morning light filtering through the single dingy window beside her. Her blanket was draped over her shoulders, and her book lay next to her with a note on top: _Flatmate has a date next Friday night. Next time I’ll bring tea. Bring your own sugar._  Clara smiled and checked the time on her mobile; as she spent the next thirty minutes in a frenzy of swearing and changing clothes as quickly as possible, that same smile stayed constantly on the edges of her mouth.


	3. Biscuits and Cocoa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara's evening is disrupted when her reclusive neighbor shows up and insists on using her space heater. It turns out he is not only cold and grumpy, but not above blackmail. Or at least, not against the pretense of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you thought I'd forgotten about this.
> 
> Spoiler alert: I totally had. 
> 
> I was actually going to publish this as something separate before i remembered I already had a spot for it. This is a combination of two AU ideas: Person A discovers person B is hiding a cat, and Person A is the only one in the flat with a space heater when the heating system goes out, and person B is cold. We're going to ignore the fact that persons A and B switch places in those examples. Just read and enjoy.

The heat was out. Again. Clara sat curled up on her couch, wrapped in her duvet and reading by the light of the soft lamp beside her. A gently steaming cup of hot cocoa promised relaxation and comfort, as soon as the warming air would render it cool enough to drink. A tiny space heater whirred away from its spot in front of the entertainment center, and she could hear the snow outside making tiny patting noises against the apartment window when the wind blew. All in all, it was a perfect night to not have to wake up early the next day, and Clara smiled as she buried her nose deeper in the blanket, exposing her fingers just long enough to turn the page and stroke the kitten purring on the armrest of the sofa, fast asleep.

There was a knock at the door. Clara frowned at looked out the window at the unbroken blanket of white outside. No snowplows, so nobody could have driven through this mess to come see her even if she had been expecting them—and she hadn’t. The little cat lifted his head, and Clara stroked it back down, shushing it gently. She bookmarked her page and got up from the couch, slipping her feet into a pair of slippers she’d strategically placed a safe distance from the space heater; close enough to warm them, far enough away to prevent a fire. The knock came again. Clara drew the duvet tighter and pulled the door open just enough to peek out. The first thing she saw were the eyebrows. A second glance told her that eyebrows were about all she was going to get; the figure in front of her door was so wrapped in layers of scarves and mittens and hats that little else was exposed.

“Mmmfnnpft” he said.

Clara blinked. “Come again?”

The man—her neighbor, she realized, the one who had asked for an entire cup of nutmeg last week because he “couldn’t be arsed to go to the store right now. And probably not in the next two weeks, either”—twisted his head so that his chin appeared above the colorful fabrics adorning him and said. “I need to borrow your space heater.”

“What?”

“I’m cold,” the man said. He stared hard at her, waiting.

“If you take my space heater, then _I’ll_ be cold,” Clara said, her voice sounding unusually measured and reasonable despite the absurdity of the situation. “And seeing as how I’m who bought it, I think it should stay in here with me.” Biscuit chirped. The man looked over her shoulder.

“Nice cat you’ve got there,” he said amicably. “Illegal, but cute.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

“I might not if I was warm enough to think straight,” he replied. She saw his breath frost in the air and felt the dimmest glimmer of pity.

“You could have just asked to come in,” she said sullenly. “You didn’t have to blackmail me.”

He stepped across the threshold of the now-open door. “Obviously I did,” he pointed out. “You weren’t going to invite me in otherwise.” He spied the cup of cocoa on the stand beside the couch. “Can I have that?”

“No! It’s mine.” She paused and took a deep breath. “If you want some, the machine is in there on the counter.” She glowered at him as he unwrapped a particularly colorful, long scarf from around his neck.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to give me that cup of cocoa and make another one for yourself? That way yours would be even warmer. I’m willing to suffer a lukewarm drink.”

“It’s steaming,” Clara said helplessly, but he was wrestling a coat over his head. Clara stalked for the kitchen, muttering under her breath. Who was this guy, showing up and threatening to tell about her cat, and staring straight into her with those ridiculously blue eyes? The cabinet made a satisfying smack as she closed it, irritated. She drummed her fingers on the cabinet as she waited for the machine to heat the milk and cocoa blend. Sometimes she liked to make it in a pot on the stove—it tasted better, somehow, when she hovered over it and stirred it constantly—but she’d been so excited to collapse on the couch and read that she’s opted for the quicker method.

Clara withdrew the smiling cat mug from beneath the spout and hiked the duvet up higher to avoid tripping over it. She padded back into the living room to find the stranger lying on his stomach and playing with her cat, extending and waggling a long finger, then curling it back just as Biscuit’s black and white paw shot out to catch it. Suddenly, she felt that maybe a stranger in her flat on a snowy night might not be the worst thing. He liked cats, at any rate. How bad could he be? “You old fraud,” she said as she sank back onto the couch. “You wouldn’t have ever turned him in.” She thought she saw the faintest of smiles on the man’s face. As she sipped her new mug of cocoa, she took in the details of the stranger, which had previously been obscured by the array of jackets and scarves. A full head of wild, silver curls, and lines all over which caught the soft lamplight in different ways and played shadows across a strong jaw and prominent, sharp nose. The last time he’d turned up at her door, for the nutmeg, his head had been covered by a hoodie and he’d looked positively exhausted.

“I met Verne once.” Clara jumped, startled by the sudden break of silence.

“What?”

He nodded to the book perched on the couch’s arm. “Your author there. Met him. Nice fellow. Ahead of his time—though I might have had something to do with that, come to think of it.”

“Really?” Clara said, and then she frowned. “You couldn’t have met him. He died in the early 20th century— oh-five, I think. You’re older, but not that old.” The man raised an amused eyebrow, and then grunted as Biscuit pounced on his finger and gnawed it triumphantly. Clara laughed. “So what’s your name?” she asked, once Biscuit had been placated and was purring contentedly in the man’s lap as he sipped the last half of his mug of cocoa, warming his feet in front of the heater.

“John Smith,” he said, in a way that suggested that he hadn’t really until now thought that knowing each other’s names was in any way important. “Most people call me the Doctor, though.”

“A medical man without a space heater.” She tutted. “I’m Clara Oswald. English teacher. Not a doctor yet, though. Maybe one day, after some more schooling.”

“Clara,” the Doctor repeated. Then he smiled. “Do you have a habit of giving into strangers at the first sign of trouble, or is this a special event?” By this point, Clara was fairly certain she had him figured out, and she ignored him, returning to her book. She knew she’d pegged him correctly when he simply chuckled and returned to his game with Biscuit.

******************

Clara awoke to soft morning light through the living room window, still snuggled on the couch in her duvet. She was sweating, and she clawed her way out of the lump of material. She briefly considered dropping it on the Doctor’s sleeping form, but deposited it on the couch and crossed to the vent to feel for the air. It was warm, and she turned the thermostat down a few degrees. No sense in smoking herself out of her own flat. She turned back around the find the Doctor already awake and trying to look past the cat snoozing on his chest to the window.

“Morning, sunshine,” Clara said. “Heat’s back on.” The Doctor shifted the blanket Clara had thrown at him in a mock surrender to his mock threat of taking hers, and gathered a disgruntled and decidedly sleepy Biscuit under one arm. He stroked the cat’s ears and set him on the blanket where he’d been, then stretched. Clara resisted a giggle at the exposed stripe of tum, which startled against the red-trimmed black of his ensemble.

“I suppose I’ll be going now,” said the Doctor, gathering his long scarf and various warm clothing.

“Suppose so.” She watched him walk to the door, tilt to grab the knob without letting go of his cargo. “Doctor,” she said. He turned his head, waited. “I guess me n’ Biscuit will see you at the next heat outage, yeah?” For a moment she thought she had him all wrong, that he really could not have cared less about crashing on her living room floor.

Then a slow smile broke over the Doctor’s face. “I’ll bring my own mug,” he promised.


	4. Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara's husband is a travel writer and she goes with him on all of his assignments, so there's nobody to tend the lawn. Clara hires a lawn boy and learns something about the Doctor that sparks the protective streak in her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: Imagine person A and person B live in the house with the worst lawn and all of the neighbors resent them for it.
> 
> Just a thing I wrote at work. I'm recovering from heat exhaustion (who knew it was such a big deal??) and idk this story went where it wanted to. It actually sounds like canon, minus the TARDIS and plus a mortgage. And marriage. And the tenth and eleventh doctors making a cameo. You know what? Forget it. Completely AU.

“Maybe we should look into getting a lawn boy.” Clara sat staring out the dining room’s picture window, chin in her hand and a yet-unsipped mug of tea steaming gently on the table in front of her. She was looking at the lawn, which they had jokingly begun referring to as “the jungle” a few weeks ago and was now sporting worryingly large patches of weeds. Her husband paused his folding of her shirts into a suitcase and looked up, puzzled eyebrows looking to the untrained eye like a scowl.

“What for?” he asked.

“I’m starting to think the neighbors resent our yard.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor. He visibly relaxed. “Is that all? Who cares—we’re never here anyway.” He resumed packing, humming softly under his breath.

“That’s true,” Clara said, “but this is a rather nice neighborhood and we might be spoiling the net worth of the whole place.”

“You’re not still sore about the ‘condemned’ sign one of them stuck in the grass last week?” He said it lightly but when Clara failed to respond, he came over and wrapped his arms around her from behind, bending down to rest his chin in the hollow of her collarbone. “You’re thinking about roots,” he said.

A long moment passed, during which Clara leaned her face into his and took a sip of tea. “Not right now,” she said finally. “The traveling, the adventure…I do love it, and I love you.” He rubbed his stubble on her face like a giant cat, and Clara giggled. “But eventually,” she said, still smiling. “Eventually I do want to be a part of a community, and I just don’t think we can expect to be welcomed into this one unless we make an effort to sow some seeds, as it were.”

There was a long, companionable silence. Finally Clara poked the Doctor’s face. “Sorry,” he said, his voice rumbling through her shoulder. “Was tryin’ to think of another plant metaphor. Roots, seeds…sorry, but all I can think of is pollinating.”

Clara laughed. “Talking about plants does it for you, then? Definitely filing that away for later.” The Doctor kissed her cheek, smiling, and then stood and stretched.

“I’m going to finish packing,” he said. “Maybe you can offer the kid next door a few pounds to work on the yard.”

“The gangly one?” she asked. “He seems more likely to trip over his chin and...I dunno, mow his trousers or something. Or his hair,” she added after a moment.

“That’d likely be an improvement,” the Doctor said drily, but Clara wasn’t listening. She snapped her fingers.

“I know exactly who to ask,” she said.

*** *** *** *** 

“Him? Are you serious?” Clara noticed absently that the higher the Doctor’s voice got, the thicker his Scottish brogue became. She waved to the man who had been in the house moments before, and who was now tangling with a thorny patch that was big and twisty enough to insinuate sentience.

“Course I’m serious,” she said. “Have you _seen_ his flower garden?”

“Course I’ve seen it!”

“Then you know he’s the man for the job,” she said. “I’ve never seen someone who could tend roses like that. What’s got you in a bother about this?” Concerned, she stepped towards the Doctor and threaded a hand through his silver hair, tugging gently. Something about the pressure always calmed him down—at the very least, it caged some of the restless energy that kept him always on the move, the same energy that had earned him his position as a moderately well-known travel writer.

Her husband spent a long moment struggling for words. She waited patiently, scratching her fingernails lightly over his scalp in support. Finally he mumbled something, shamefaced and looking down and away.

“I couldn’t hear you.” Clara said gently.

A blush rose in his cheeks. Clara was surprised; that kind of blush was generally reserved for the times when bedroom words and thoughts occurred in public, usually when Clara was muttering exactly what she planned to do to him after any given date. What could he possibly be thinking? A deep breath, then, “He’s pretty.”

It took Clara a second to register his words, another to understand, and then a handful to work on keeping from bursting out laughing. She was fond of deflating his ego—she took almost every chance she got, truthfully—but he was so shamefaced and insecure before her that she could not find it in herself to press him. She took his hand in her free one and tugged his hair until he was looking at her.  “Doctor,” she said slowly, “have I ever been the kind of girl who goes for ‘pretty?’”

He raised and lowered a shoulder, then gestured to himself— _obviously not._ She huffed at him and he smiled sheepishly. “I chose you, idiot,” she said, and the raw edge in her voice caught his attention; he was suddenly concerned. “I chose you for so much more than looks, or even personality. It was that and more.”

“Have you met humans?” he asked forlornly. “They all have something more.”

“Not like you. Doctor, what is this really about?” Clara sought his eyes with hers, but his were fixed on the wood flooring, which they’d both broken in with a tub of wax and some thick socks on their first day in the house.

“He looks…like you.”

Clara tilted her head. “Scottish, freckles, pointy hair? Nope, not seeing it.” She was rewarded with the barest trace of a smile.

“No, I mean…he’s your age. The age of people you—”

“Don’t you dare finish that statement,” Clara said. Her voice sounded harsher than she intended; she scratched his scalp again in reassurance.

The Doctor stopped mid-word, his jaw working. “People think I’m your dad,” he said finally.

“I don’t give a flying rat’s arse what people—just how long have you been struggling with this?” Clara moved the hand in her husband’s hair down to his lined cheek, tracing the curve of his bottom lip with her thumb. He looked so small in his black jumper, and she leaned forward to place a kiss on one of the holes over his heart.

“Pretty much since we met,” he admitted, dropping his chin onto her hair. Her instinct was to pull back and look at him now that he was being honest with her, but she knew this was hard for him to say. So she let him talk over her head and pressed her ear against his chest, arms wrapped tight around him. “I kept waiting for you to realize that I was all wrong for you,” he continued, “but you never did.”

“Married you, if you recall.” He smiled. She pulled away and tugged his arm. “Come on,” she said. “Mr. Smith isn’t due for another hour.”

Some of the Doctor’s humor won out in the end, and an eyebrow lifted as they passed through the foyer, Clara’s yellow raincoat rustling on its hook as they brushed past it. “If he’s a mister, what does that make me?” he asked as they crossed the threshold of the bedroom. His wife turned to him, her eyes suddenly dark and fierce, every inch a queen. He yelped as she swung him ungracefully on the bed, sending one pillow sliding neatly off the side of the bed. She was on him, then, lips against his ear and a hand pinning his shoulder to the duvet.

“It makes you,” she whispered, glorying in his shiver, “mine.”


	5. Closing Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's a holiday retail worker. He's apparently a socially inept narcoleptic. What could go wrong?

Clara Oswald had dealt with a hell of a lot of people today. Clara Oswald had been yelled at, threatened, bossed around, and just been generally beaten down by the general public and if she was still working during the holidays next year, her boss could take a long walk off a short pier if he thought she was dealing with this shit again. Clara Oswald was through with today. So when she spied a man asleep on one of the display mattresses back in the bedroom area of the store, limbs akimbo and mouth wide open and-- was he *drooling?* Oh no no no she was NOT taking the flak for this idiot.

"Oi," she said, nudging his knee with the back end of her broom. "Get up. We're closed."

The man on the bed twitched with a grunt, and startling blue eyes suddenly found hers. It was the eyebrows, however, that caught her attention. They were silver like the halo of curls on the top of his head and currently angling down towards his nose in bleary frustration. "What's got you knickers in a twist?" he protested, and then touched two fingers to his face. "Pretend I didn't just ask that with drool on my chin. But seriously, can't an old man take a nap on a nice bed once in awhile?"

Clara glared right back at him. "Not when the bed is still in the store."

The man unfolded from the edge of the bed; the lining of his coat made him look oddly like a tall bird. An ibis, perhaps, but with the face of an owl. He gestured with both hands, and the image stuck. "Then what d'you decorate them for?" he asked. "Bloke like me walkin' along, been on his feet all day and sees a nice bed and he's not allowed to kip on it?"

"They're decorated to convince people to *buy* them!"

"I've got no plans of buying one-- I just wanted a nap!"

They stared each other down, breathing hard. "Look," Clara said in her best customer service voice. Clara Oswald was nothing if not diplomatic in a pinch, after all. "We closed half an hour ago. You can leave with your dignity intact, or I will chase your scawny arse out of here with this broom." She brandished it at him threateningly, and he eyed her warily with his arms folded. "I have been dealing with not being able to use this on the general public for ten hours solid so I stay employed long enough to buy Christmas presents for the family and all I want is to go home and have a drink."

He blinked at her. "Tongue tired? That was quite a mouthful."

Clara's shoulders sagged in defeat. She felt like crying. If he would just leave, she could sweep and go home. "My everything is tired," she said. "I just want to go home and sleep."

She regretted her words as soon as she said them. The man perked up instantly, alert and animated. "In a bed?" he asked. "Of course in a bed. Everyone's got beds. Can I use yours?" He yelped and backed up as Clara jabbed at him with the broom.

"Ten seconds, and then I am calling security," she said.

"Alright, alright," he said. "That's fair. I'm sorry. I'll go. But for what it's worth, I saw you help that little girl find her mother earlier and if you want a drink on me, I'll be down at the pub."

He raised his eyebrows, a gesture suggesting "well?" Clara's eyes narrowed. "Three seconds." She lifted the broom. The man turned tail and ran, and only when he had flailed around the corner did Clara lean on the broom and push her free hand through her hair, sighing. She was smiling; she couldn't help it. It was possible, she thought as she swept, that she might put up with him again under better circumstances. The bird look worked for him, as much as a bird look could work for someone, and that hair was truly impressive. Two drinks, she considered. Two drinks from him, and she'd see where things went from there. Clara Oswald had a bed, but if he wanted to use it he was going to work damn hard for it.


	6. A Whole New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara just wanted to walk the dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Levendis, who got in a conversation with someone on tumblr and mentioned a desire for a doctor/eel hybrid. As one does. All I need in order to write are a plot and someone who wants the thing, so here we go!

At first, Clara thought the yelling was part of her music. It was distant, coarse, and arguably thematically relevant, but it was the accent that tipped her off. Scottish swearing in the middle of an American techno pop song wouldn’t have been out of place for many other artists, but she didn’t think this one was intentionally messing with the main melody. So she stopped, tugged gently on the nylon leash to prompt Rubbish to consider stopping too (he didn’t), and removed one earbud. The yelling was definitely louder, and she squinted into the fresh dark of late evening in the general direction of the lapping waves-- oh. The shape was a man, caked from the waist down in sand and seaweed. He didn’t seem to be able to walk, but he didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of the water reaching him, so Clara took her time edging closer. She fingered the travel-sized can of mace attached to her belt loop and called, “Hullo?” The man stopped struggling and twisted so that he was propping himself up on an elbow and craning backwards to look at her. His feet twitched the sand behind him like a convulsion. 

“It’s about time,” he snapped, but Clara had spent enough time around emotionally inept children to hear the relief in his words. At her feet, Rubbish growled and stiffened, perfectly still for the first time since Clara had laid eyes on him. She nudged him with her foot, and he sprang a full two feet in the air and hid behind her legs. “Well?” the man’s voice was crusty with salt and sand, but she still heard the unmistakable sound of pain. Clara made her way gingerly to the edge of the stone ledge separating the beach from the “park” (a wide swath of dog-piss-yellow grass with a tree in the middle of it, made somewhat less unbearable by the moonlight). 

“Are you from the home?” she asked, once she had secured Rubbish’s leash to a hook on the tree that had probably been placed there for that exact purpose. She was referring to the nursing facility a few streets up, but even as she said it she thought that was the wrong place for this man. She’d seen the gray hair and the twitching legs and made an assumption that he was old, but saw it now-- there was still something very youthful about him. He wiggled too much, for one, and seemed far too comfortable with it. She was nearly in reach now, the loose sand arcing behind her with each shifting step. Getting that out of her trainers was going to be hell later. She unhitched the can of mace and showed it to him. “Don’t try anything fishy,” she said.

He smiled, a wolfish flash of teeth, before he curled in on himself with pain, sandy legs twitching again. Clara knelt beside him and looked around for some kind of wheelchair or water raft-- anything that might explain how he’d gotten here. She didn’t realize she’d placed a comforting hand on him until he moved his head, which had stilled under her touch. His curls were salt-stiff and ropy, his eyes an indeterminable color in the dark. Something tingled under her palm, the sensation all the way up to her elbow before she jerked her hand back in alarm. “Sorry,” the man said. “Static. Can you...can you get me into the water?”

“How is that going to help?” Above them, Rubbish barked, emboldened by the fact that he was tethered and had no obligation to make good on his threats. 

“It doesn’t hurt there,” he said. Clara blinked. She’d read a study once on the healing effects of salt water, but she wasn’t sure it worked quite like that. Oh, well.

“Come on then,” she said, grabbing him under the armpits (another shock, this time on the wrist). “Can you walk if you lean on me?”

“Nope, sorry,” he said, deadweight. “You’ll have to carry me.” 

Clara tried to lever him against her for another moment before her arms gave out and she dropped the man onto the sand with an anticlimactic pup. He made a noise of protest, muffled by the sand in his mouth. Clara looked at the edge of the water five feet away, and then back at him. “I just wanted to walk my dog,” she complained, looking down at the sand now crusting her leggings and tank top.

The man waved a hand, still facedown in the sand. “He’s already escaped the flat while you were gone. He’s just scamming you at this point.”

For a moment, Clara almost believed him. He said it in a way that offered no room for a punchline, like a fact. “Hah,” she said, and rolled him so that he was sitting up and leaning against her for support. His legs twitched once and she felt a tingle in her knee where it met his back. She threw a sandy, sinewy arm around her shoulders and shifted him so that he was in a kind of piggy back ride, only not holding on with his feet. And much too tall. Clara spit sand and hair out of her mouth, gripped his forearms locked around her shoulders, and slogged grimly forward towards the shore. 

It was only a short distance, but the man was completely unable to assist and his head kept lolling on her shoulder. He smelled of deep places, she thought, though she couldn’t figure out how and she was too out of breath to comment. 

Finally, she felt the sand squish beneath her feet and knew they were at the shore. She put on a burst of energy to wade them out ankle deep, and then she collapsed and rolled him off of her.

“Ow,” he said mildly, this time on his back. “Again.” 

Clara rose into a crouch, her whole front dripping, and frowned at him. “You’re sure?” she asked. She was going to have on strong cup of tea when this...whatever it was was over.

“Very.” 

Clara took a deep breath and situated one arm under his shoulders and one under his-- her right arm registered a sharp shock, more vicious than the previous, and as she took those last two steps, she realized that she was not holding knees. His skin was slimy and went down far longer than it should, like he was wearing a dark cape around his middle instead of his neck. Now that the sand had mostly washed off in the water...Clara shrieked and threw the man away from her as far as she could. Adrenaline aided her; she got a him a solid foot before he crashed into the surf, bewildered and shouting in surprise as he thrashed his-- oh god, she wasn’t done screaming. A small part of her wanted to make sense of what she was seeing. The rest of her mind kindly beat the impulse to a pulp as she turned and fled, scraping her hand on the tree when she yanked Rubbish’s leash off of it and dragged him behind her. 

She didn’t stop running until she was back in her flat with the door slammed behind her, sobbing both for breath and out of complete shock. He hadn’t had legs. He had...a tail. Like some kind of second rate mermaid (merman, an infuriatingly calm voice in the back of her head corrected). Rubbish tugged his leash free from her hand and wandered off in the direction of the toilet, completely bypassing the bowl of fresh water in the kitchen.

She stayed sitting with her back against the front door for a few more minutes before she noticed that she was shivering and plastered in wet sand and making an awful mess on the linoleum. Shower, she thought. Safety. Normalcy. She was halfway to the washroom before she even registered she’d moved. 

Clara had always wondered if she had a limit for the amount of weird things she could handle. She’d seen her fair share of weird, of course. Teaching children was no task to scoff at. But she’d almost never had her entire ideology of how the world worked set so firmly on its ear. She could feel her mind trying to make a decision as she scrubbed a towel through her hair: forget this ever happened, or try to make it happen again? 

The decision was made for her when a vaguely familiar face materialized in the steam of her mirror.

“Hello?” the man said, and it sounded, impossibly, like the mirror itself was speaking, like he’d channeled his voice through glass. Clara froze with her hands still holding the towel to her head. “Oh good,” he said. “I found you. I think I gave a fright to the old gentleman a few houses down.” He fell expectantly silent.

Clara unfroze. “Nope,” she said, and swiped her towel through the steam. His startled eyes looked at her for the briefest of moments above the streak, and then the image dissolved into nothing but her, standing in her bathroom and wielding a towel in her favorite camisol and pajama pants.

Of course, her phone rang.

This felt safer, somehow, she thought as she stared down the screen. A merman was calling her on her phone, probably, and only now did it seem sensible to engage this frankly bizarre scenario. She took the phone into the living room and made herself cozy before pressing the button to accept.

“You’re face timing me,” she said when he appeared in her little 3 x 4 window.

“Again,” he said cheerfully. A fish swam behind his head. Clara deleted the memory. Not ready to consider the implications of that yet.

“No,” she said. “That was not face timing just then. You...possessed my mirror or something.

He frowned. “I don’t see how that’s different than possessing your phone.”

“That’s my point,” she said. “It isn’t.”

“Oh,” he said. “I thought it was clever.”

“Mm,” Clara replied. She didn’t hang up. After an awkward pause, “Do you call up all of the women who dump you into the dea and run off screaming?”

He scratched his head, and Clara was only vaguely perturbed to see that his hair looked curly and dry despite the light patterns and air bubbles drifting around his face. “Statistically, I suppose so,” he said. “Seein’ as how you’re the only one so far. I’m the Doctor, by the way.”

Clara sighed. “Of course you are. A proper name just wouldn’t suit you, would it?” 

“It is a proper name,” he insisted. 

“Alright,” she said. “I’m Clara.”

“Your dog told me.”

“I’m still rejecting that.” She twirled the end of her air around a finger. “Can I see it?” she asked finally.

He blinked.

“Your tail. Or fin, or whatever it is.”

“Tail,” he said, mildly defensive. “Fins are the things that go on tails, and eels don’t have any.”

Clara flexed her fingers absentmindedly, remembering the tingling. “You’re an eel then.”

“Clearly not,” he said. “I have hair.” His voice was like a wounded little boy’s-- like Bradley’s after Clara had asked him, not without a great deal of evidence, if he’d stolen candy from the first year cubbies. 

“Right. Sorry. Part eel, then. Go on, let’s see it, eelboy.”

He shot her a dark look, but he backed away from the camera and performed a slow, graceful backflip. Clara tried to keep her face neutral, but she was badly impressed. The long, dark length was a dark, iridescent green, and an intricate pattern of blue light tattooed the length of it. The whole thing was framed with a ripple of black that ended at his waist.

“Not bad,” she managed. He scowled. Point for Oswald. “What were you doing on the beach anyway?” 

He turned his head sharply, and his eyes narrowed. “Breaking rules,” he said softly. 

“My Lord, what are you--” The Doctor flicked his eyes back to her and seemed to be trying to tell her something with them. Those eyebrows could talk, and Clara was pretty sure they were a warning. The screen went dead.

“Wait,” she said. “Doctor?”

Clara sat staring at her home background until Rubbish began chewing on something in the next room that sounded suspiciously like paper towels. Finally, she tucked the phone into the pocket of her pajamas and pushed herself off the couch and back into reality. So merpeople existed. Presumably at least two. One of them was lying about who he was, and it sounded like an important secret. None of this meant she didn’t still have marking to do for the next day. 

Clara shooed Rubbish into his crate and turned to the stove. She was surprised, making her cup of tea a few minutes later, to find that she was smiling.


End file.
